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Four members of the House Financial Services Committee – including Rep. Tom Emmer, the House leadership majority whip – have called on the SEC to approve the ETF applications, and they will be able to ask it questions about it at a hearing this week.
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The industry is waiting for the regulator to act after the SEC lost a court fight over its decision to reject Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF spot application.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should listen to the courts and abandon efforts to block regulatory approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), a bipartisan group of lawmakers argued in a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler on Tuesday.
On the the day before his scheduled appearance Before the House Financial Services Committee, four members of that panel sent Gensler a letter claiming that a bitcoin spot ETF is “indistinguishable” from the crypto futures ETFs for which the agency has already given its blessing . For this reason, the agency should approve applicants seeking SEC approval, such as loyalty, BlackRock iShares and Grayscale Investments, which shares CoinDesk’s parent company, Digital Currency Group.
“The SEC’s current position is untenable moving forward,” said the letter from Reps. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.C.). DN.Y). .) “Following the Court of Appeal’s decision, there is no reason to continue to deny such requests under inconsistent and discriminatory standards.”
Last month, a Washington Circuit Court of Appeals judge ordered the SEC to rethink your vision on these applications. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote that the agency’s dismissal in the Grayscale case had been “arbitrary and capricious.”
House lawmakers urged the SEC to “immediately” approve the pending applications. Gensler is scheduled to appear in an SEC oversight hearing before that committee on Wednesday, so members will have the opportunity to question him on the topic.
A Bitcoin ETF could offer investors a much simpler way to invest money in the cryptocurrency market, as ETFs are designed to be simple to trade through brokerage accounts.
Emmer, who is a member of the House leadership as majority whip, Flood and Torres are members of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the House.
Learn more: The SEC’s grayscale legal rout places the agency in a role of will, will, with Gensler
